Despite advances in learning technology, training administration remains stuck in the stone age. From an endless number of spreadsheets and a myriad of shared calendars, L&D teams manage both in-person and live virtual training manually. Why the excessive admin work for a process that should have been simplified years ago?
Most “training tech” has been primarily focused on the “front-office”, or the interactions between learners and the software. However, there hasn’t been much discussion of the technological needs of the L&D “back-office”. What’s the difference? We can think of learning technologies as a continuum between training professionals who are planning the learning strategy, delivery, and intricately carrying out operational processes, and learners, who are engaging with the content. Of course, this relationship goes both ways.
Learning Front-office: The front office is relentlessly focused on the learner’s needs. This sets a high bar for intuitiveness, user experience, flexibility, and more. Goals for these innovations can include better learner engagement, impact, and retention. Examples of front-office classroom innovations include the blended learning approach, personalized and adaptive learning, microlearning, AI, collaborative platforms, gamification, or game-based learning.
Learning Back-office: The bulk of where the administrative and management work takes place for L&D. From a single training session to multiple training programs, the learning back-office is focused on supporting the needs of instructors assigned to virtual instructor-led training (VILT), and requires advanced optimization and business-oriented features to help get the job done. Back-office innovations can improve efficiency by simplifying and automating large-scale planning, optimizing resources and budgets, and significantly reducing the administrative workload. These capabilities have been largely ignored, giving way to why these processes are often painstakingly done manually in spreadsheets, shared calendars, homegrown systems, or not at all.
Here’s an important point: Even as we implement experience-focused initiatives in today’s shift from instructor-led training to virtual instructor-led training, we rarely consider how it will affect operational processes. But, this is a two-way street. Connected classrooms, for example, mean new equipment, venues, and roles to manage; personalized learning journeys require flexibility and visibility for highly adaptable scheduling and more.
Training Management Software: The System Designed for L&D Operations
The learning management system (LMS) is currently one of the most popular tools for managing classroom and virtual instructor-led training. However, the LMS was never designed to do so, which drives the use of additional tools such as spreadsheets or home-grown systems, leading to less-than-desirable, inefficient experiences.
Why exactly can’t an LMS properly manage instructor-led and virtual instructor-led training? ILT and vILT are fundamentally different from e-learning. They involve more complex back-office processes and a wider range of resources. As a result, ILT / vILT tends to be more costly. A successful in-person and virtual instructor-led training program hinges on the achievement of these three core goals:
Moving Away from Spreadsheets for Scheduling: Using Excel spreadsheets is the de facto method for scheduling training. While this may work for a small number of training seminars and sessions throughout the year, it proves to quickly be inefficient with a larger number of sessions. It can prove to be even more of a challenge if the training provider is managing training schedules for large organizations with various training programs. While it may work for now, scheduling with spreadsheets isn’t sustainable for an L&D team in the long run.
Managing L&D Resources: Trainers, SMEs, Training Sites, and Equipment: The growth of the LMS and other learning tech have made it cheaper to provide continued training and development at the cost of quality. There’s a reason why providing traditional instructor-led training tends to be more expensive. With programs that require live trainers for multiple sessions both in-person and online, resourcing becomes paramount. The Logistics of Learning, as some may call it, must be adequately monitored similar to the monitoring of the vitals of a patient in critical condition. L&D teams want to make sure that training budgets and costs aren’t over but also want to make sure that each session is adequately staffed with a trainer and SME.
Optimizing the budget: Budget optimization is the #1 challenge when managing instructor-led and virtual instructor-led training because ILT / vILT involves a wider range of processes and resources than e-learning. The right technology should help proactively track costs and align the budget with your strategy. The LMS was not designed to achieve these goals. Rather, it was built with the mission of delivering e-learning. E-learning’s main strength is its low cost and flexibility, so why would LMSs develop optimization features?
More technically, the LMS uses the learner as a building block, not the session. This is not optimal for classroom training and virtual instructor-led training, for which the business logic is driven by the training session. An example is cost distribution (i.e., an LMS consolidates cost per learner to define session costs). However, most ILT / vILT costs are fixed regardless of the number of learners (e.g., room reservation, instructor fee, etc.). This is why LMSs struggle to provide accurate cost tracking. It also means that LMSs have a hard time planning future investments for which learners are not yet identified by name.
Modernizing ILT / vILT with a Training Management System
So, how can organizations fully emerge from the training management stone age? A more efficient, modernized approach to training management involves a Training Management System. This type of software helps training professionals optimize their time, allocate resources efficiently, and reduce administrative workload. Instead of spending hours on manual and disconnected solutions, a Training Resource Management System allows your organization to automate and streamline training back-office administrative tasks in one place. It’s time to bring your ILT / vILT out of the stone age and into a faster, more efficient training management future.
